Fifty years ago, the flames that engulfed the Hollywood blockbuster The Towering Inferno, ignited not just a movie, but a full-blown cinematic spectacle. The film, made on a budget of $14 million, rounded off a growing trend of disaster films that held audiences in the US spellbound for years.
With a glittering gala, hundreds of guests, and a single spark, all in the world’s tallest skyscraper, the movie seemed grounded, the stakes felt painfully real, and a star-studded cast comprising Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden, Faye Dunaway and Fred Astaire, kept audiences glued to the edge of its seats.
On land, in the high seas or in the air, such disaster movies had always been popular with American audiences. The earliest in the genre is said to be James Williamson’s silent film Fire! made in 1901 and depicting a burning house accompanied by heroic firefighting efforts. It was followed by others that explored epic catastrophes. In fact, long before James Cameron’s Titanic hit the screen in 1997, a string of movies like In Nacht und Eis had already dealt with the subject. These films laid the foundation for the disaster movie boom of the 1970s.
Indeed, The Towering Inferno was a continuation of films like 1970’s Airport, a tense drama set aboard a hijacked airplane, which had already shown the way to audiences who craved the adrenaline rush of large-scale cinematic catastrophes. In its wake came The Poseidon Adventure featuring a capsized ocean liner, and Earthquake, which brought a major city to its knees. All these movies shared common elements: edge-of-the seat action, all-star casts facing peril, and the underlying question of who would survive against the odds.
While disaster movies often capitalize on spectacle, The Towering Inferno was more than just a bunch of cheap thrills. Amidst the chaos of a high-rise building on fire, it exposed hubris, explored themes of human fragility, and reflected societal anxieties of its time.